Virtualization management software allows multiple virtual machines (VMs) to execute on a single hardware computing platform. Each VM is an abstraction of a physical computing system and executes a “guest” operating system. Virtualization management software also manages how hardware computing resources are allocated to each VM. A group of hardware computing platforms may be organized as a cluster to provide the hardware computing resources for VMs. In a data center, it is common to see hundreds, even thousands, of VMs running on multiple clusters of host servers.
When a server cluster at one location fails, the virtual infrastructure at that location may be recovered at a remote location through a disaster recovery process. For example, the virtual infrastructure may be continuously replicated to the remote location prior to the disaster event, and after the disaster event the entire data center (or a portion thereof) may be restarted at the remote location. Commercially available disaster recover products include VMware® vCenter Site Recovery Manager.
Disaster recovery of a VM from one location to another typically requires reconfiguring network properties of the guest operating system (OS) of the VM to match the network configuration at the recovery site. This reconfiguration is referred to as VM IP customization and can involve modifying TCP/IP settings of the guest operating system such as static IP address, network mask, gateway, and domain name system (DNS) information, among other things. Traditional VM IP customization requires recovery configuration settings to be specified for each VM individually, which is a labor-intensive process that is tedious and can negatively affect user experience, manageability, and successful execution of disaster recovery.